ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the issue of agency and explores how some researchers have employed the ideas of the ontological turn in their own research. Bennett described the agency of objects and other entities through the introduction of the term 'vital materialism'. To break out of the representationalist trap, Barad encourages us to shift to thinking in terms of performativity. Performativity should not be confused with performance. A performance is a willful doing, conscious and chosen by the actor. In considering the nature/culture dichotomy, Kohn (2013) asks that rather than temper the importance of language, we expand our ideas about what can be in the semiotic realm. The Earth is a blue marble from space, blue with water. Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is covered with the substance. Deep mapping involves physical engagement with place: walking its trails; touching its leaves, roots, stones; resting in its tall grasses; wading its cool streams.
